The Chesterton
Utility Service Board is interested in pursuing--if feasible--the extension
of sanitary sewer service to a pair of property owners in unincorporated
Liberty Township.

By unanimous votes
at their meeting Monday night, members instructed Superintendent Dave Ryan
and Town Engineer Mark O’Dell to review both proposed tie-ins.

The first petition
was filed by Alex Curiel, who’s purchased a parcel on the north side of C.R.
1050 about a quarter of a mile west of Meridian Road. Curiel expects to
break ground on a new home late this spring or early this summer and is
hopeful of tapping onto a force main in the area.

President Larry
Brandt was encouraging but undertook to make no promises. “Absolutely, we’d
love to be your provider of sewer service,” he said, but then noted that
there would be “some challenges.”

At issue, as Member
Andy Michel explained: the matter of precedent. “Maybe one does it but what
happens if other parcels get developed down the line?”

Member John
Schnadenberg concurred. “One person’s no big deal,” he said. “But then
suddenly we’re talking about multiple tie-ins.”

Also complicating
matters, Ryan said, is the question of annexation. Curiel’s parcel lacks the
statutory 1/8 contiguity to Chesterton’s corporate limits necessary for
annexation, and the Service Board in the past has been hesitant to provide
tie-ins to owners of unannexable property.

In any case,
members referred the matter to Ryan and O’Dell. “I’m hopeful Dave and Mark
will be able to come up with a solution,” Brandt said.

The second petition
was filed by Jill Chitwood, who would like to sell her late father’s home at
1050N 50E. The property’s septic system has failed, however, and there isn’t
room on the site to build a new one, Chitwood told members.

In this case the
technical solution is a fairly easy one. It could, though, prove “very
expensive” to Chitwood, Michel suggested, as the nearest sewer main is
located something like 600 feet to the north, up 50E.

Contiguity is not
an issue in this case, though, and Chitwood said that she would file an
annexation petition with the Town Council.

Once again, the
Service Board referred the matter to Ryan and O’Dell. “If you can work out
the details, we would love to do a tie-in,” Michael said.

Storage Basin

Works As Designed

in other business,
Ryan reported that, in his judgment, every single one of the 616,000 gallons
of stormwater-diluted sewage diverted into the wastewater treatment plant’s
storage basin during the spectacular rain event on Feb. 28-March 1 would
have been bypassed into the Little Calumet River, had not the basin been up
and running.

The 1.2-million
gallon basin was constructed as part of the federally mandated Long Term
Control Plan to reduce sewage bypasses.

Fully 2.59 inches
of rain fell in the 24 hours before 8 a.m. Feb. 28 and 8 a.m. March 1. But
the bulk of it fell in only six hours, in the early evening into the early
morning.

The rain event
“required extra operator attention to maximize the plant through-put in
order to minimize the chances of a (combined sewer overflow),” Ryan noted.
“The basin filled to 10.8 feet, equating to approximately 616,000 gallons.
Kudos to the plant staff for their dedicated efforts.”

February in Review

In February,
Chesterton used 47.97 percent of its 3,668,000 gallon per day (gpd)
allotment of the wastewater treatment plant; Porter, 56.46 percent of its
851,000 gpd allotment; the Indian Boundary Conservancy District, 62.74
percent of its 81,0-00 gpd allotment; and the plant as a whole, 49.8 percent
of its capacity.

A total of 2.42
inches of precipitation was recorded last month at the wastewater treatment
plant. There were no combined sewer bypasses in the Little Calumet River.

In February, the
Utility ran a deficit of $300,332.38 and in the year-to-date is running a
deficit of $76,241.64.